Prague 5/30/08

Day Three:

After breakfast, we set off to Old Town Square to take in the sites. Old Town Square is where many of the architectural styles of Prague converge. You've got Gothic, Rococo, Baroque, Art Nouveau, Renaissance, Romanesque, etc. We went inside the Tyn Church, which was an ornate gothic church and watched the top of the hour festivities on the Old Town Hall Tower's clock strike 11am.

We hitched on with a free tour for about an hour and listened to many of the other notables regarding the square before breaking off to head over to a cafe for coffee.

I made a mistake in an earlier post. I thought the Scotts were in Prague in droves for a rugby match last Wed, but it turns out they are in town for a soccer match against CR today. They are everywhere. Painted faces, kilt wearing, flag toting, bag pipe playing, bar taking over Scotts EVERYWHERE. It was amazing. The game starts in about an hour, though I'd have to imagine they are underdogs assuming Rosiky and company are playing for CR.

Next, we crossed the river to tour Wallenstien Palace amd the gardens inside the palace walls. This Palace is the current home of the Czech Senate, and the gardens are well maintained and populated with about a dozen peacocks. Pretty interesting.

We took the tram home after lunch, and are getting ready to head to the Opera in about an hour. Then it is off to Vienna first thing tomorrow morning. Hopefully that goes smoothly.

Prague 5/29/08

Day Two:

Day two started off early with another breakfast downstairs. We set off immediately to Wenceslas Square, which is Prague equivalent of Las Ramblas in Barcelona or Champs Elysees in Paris, though possibly more historic. It was here that a protest in Nov of 1989 against Police brutality led to the Velvet Revolution, and the overthrow of Communism. The square is really more of a long double wide street, and is named after St. Wenceslas, the Patron Saint of Bohemia.

From the southeast end ofthe square, we were a short walk from Statni Opera, the Czech Republic's State Opera House. We bought tickets to Puccini's Tosca which we'll see tomorrow on 5/30. The interior looks amazing from some photos we've seen and is fashioned in Neo-Classical style decor. Stay tuned for our thoughts on the Opera.

A couple of blocks from the Opera, we saw a building that looked alot like a train station, and decided we'd go check it out. We didn't have our train tickets for Vienna yet, and thought we might look into locking those down. After a few difficult conversations in broken english and Czech, we have tickets, and think we know the drill for Saturday morning. It should be a scenic 4 hr trip getting us to Vienna (Wien) by noon on Sat.

Next, we headed to the Jewish Quarter called Josefov. When American's think of European Jewish Quarters, we immediately think to the WWII era, but this area dates back long before that. This quarter is a combination of two distinct jewish communities that settled in the area in the Mid 1400s. The West Jews settling around the Old-New Synagogue to the west, and the East Jews of the Byzantine Empire settling around the Old Shul where the current Spanish Synagogue resides on the east. The entire area is about the size of 8-10 city blocks, and isn't that big.

We first toured the Pinkas Synagogue which has been created as a memorial to the 77k+ jews lost during the Holocaust. Of the 100k jews in Prague when Germany invaded, about 80k of them were sent of to a concentration camp called Terezin located about 60 miles NE of Prague. Here many of them stayed before being sent off to Death Camps such as Auschwitz. Only 3k of the jews survivced to return to Prague after the war. In the Pinkas Synagoue on the walls is the inscription of all 77K+ jews lost. Really a shocking and touching memorial.

From there, we went to the Old Jewish Cemetary, which during the period of 1400-1600 was the only place Jews could be buried in Prague. From the photo below, you can see that the tombstones are densely packed, and in most places, the dead are burried 8-12 people deep due to lack of space.

We toured several ornate synagoues marking different periods and times in the quarter, and had a good time exploring save for the fact that things were a bit pricing, and photography was not permitted in any of the sites.

Next we grabbed lunch at Kafka Cafe named after famed Czech writier Franz Kafka sipping beer and enjoying people watching from our street side table.

From here, we decided to hoof it back home but do the Charles Bridge on our way back up the Vltava River. Charles Bridge is Prague most familiar monument connecting the Old Town with the Little Quarter which sits below Prague Castle. Until 1741, the bridge was the only crossing over the river. The bridge was commissioned by Charles IV in 1357. The bridge is pedestrian only, and is lined with statues of various Saints of Bohemia.

For dinner, we went to the raucus establishment next to our hotel called U Fleku which is pretty much a fun beer garten. Accordian players and tuba totting festively dressed guys play sing songy drinking songs and encouraged the folks sitting in the outside tables to get involved. There is only one type of beer available, and they walk around with it on trays for you to flag down when you're ready. They just keep a sheet of paper on your table with your tally that the "guy with the money" totals up for you on you way out. My tally reached 5 last night, mostly because I wanted to see if they would give me another mark at beer number 5, or would use the cross mark in typicaly tally style. They didn't do a cross. We had brats and a greek salad that were outstanding.

More stuff to do tomorrow, but am not sure I'll be able to blog it before we leave early on Sat morning to head to Vienna, and don't know if I'll have access to computers there.

Prague: 5/28/08

Day one:

We got up and had breakfast in our hotel. It was an interesting fair, but there was a bit of fruit, coffee, and pastries.

We took a cab to Prague Castle and started off on a day of touring the inside of the castle. The tall Gothic looking structure in the centre of the Castle is St Vitus Cathedral. Within the Castle Walls also house various Basilicas, Palaces, Convents, Art Museums, and much more. Read about it here

Afterspending roughly $30 on the cab ride to the Cathedral, we were motivated to figure out how the public transit system here works, and we did. I pride myself on being able to figure out Public Transit in foreign countries, and enjoyed learning the ropes here. They have buses, electric trams (Above ground) and subways. Anyhow, we made it back home for about $2 in about the same amount if time.

We were still a bit jetlagged, and both crashed for about an hour and a half. I slept HARD, and felt much better after waking.

We had dinner at Reykjavik in Old Town on a street that is on the East Bank and is a straight shoot off of the St. Charles Bridge. Apparently there was a Rugby match at Sparta Stadium last that evening between CZ Republic and Scottland, because we could hear it from the Castle, and saw lots of Dudes in Kilts wearing Scottland Rugby jersey's that evening.

On our way back home, we were walking down some less traveled streets and were commenting on how every block had 2-3 little pubs that were tiny, and mostly empty. Just then, we spotted one that was showing the USA v England soccer match being held in Wembley Stadium in England and decided to grab a beer and watch the rest of it. The match was a poor showing by the US, and by time we reached the end of the first half, the little bar was packed with Ingrid and I, and about 15 Brits, all swearing like sailors, and not very impressed with the US effort. It was fun none the less.

Three beers later, we were on our way back home calling it a late night.

Itwas a good forst day, amd we've got plans to take in an Opera at the National Opera House in two days. It should be great.

Made it to Prague

We made it. A bit of a long trip, but it couldn't have gone smoother. A quick summary.

We rolled once in Dallas, but made it out to ORD a bit late. Had 30 mins to make it to our flight to LHR (heathrow) and should have been in first, but a screw up by the agent in dallas didn't have us listed, and since we were late showing up, they'd already put some people with lower non rev status in first, so we went to business which was fine. We got to sit together. The seats were our new lie flat fully robotic seats, so we slept a little. The food and drinks were great, and we each took in a movie.

We had a 5 hr layover in LHR, and figuring out how to Nonrev on BA was interesting. They basically have this little room for all nonrevs. You list at a computer terminla bank, then wait until 60 mins prior to your departure, and your flight and ref # appear on a screen saying, yes, no, or maybe. When you get the yes, you have to check your bag, get through security, and to your gate. By the time we found out they had room for us, it was a mad dash through security and to the plane. We did spend all 5 hrs ofthe layover and fly out of the new Terminal 5, which was a $1B project for BA. Very nice terminal. Like a Nordstroms inside. They didn't loose our bags (Term 5 has cost BA hundreds of millions in lost bags fees in the first 4 months its been open).

Our hotel is great. We're on the top floor with a vaulted ceiling, very clean, has internet obviously, we just ate a great breakfast, etc. We ate dinner last night at a micro brewery recommended by a friend called Pavorsky Dum. It was a 10 min walk from here. Outstanding. I had a sampler with 8 flights of beer including a banana, dark cherry, coffee, pale, dark, wheat, pilsner, and something called nettle in the flight. For the meal, I had beef in "Candlesauce" with Czech dumplings for dinner last night. Ingrid had beef goulash. We finished dinner off with an Apple Struddle.

We're off to Prague Castle today, and might see about taking in a symphony or Opera tonight. There is a Spring concert fest going on that we'd like to take advantage of. This place is very amazing. The weather is great, and everything is green and in bloom.

ps. still trying to get twitter working on the international cell phone. Stay tuned.

Cap Tex Tri

I don't have time for the full race report. We're trying to get ourselves and the kids fed so we can hit the road back to Dallas. We've got to pack for our trip to Europe tomorrow, and are anxious to get back.

I will say this on the race. The swim was measured long, the bike was fast and hectic until I flatted at the end, and the run was a scorcher (the weather, not me). No PR. It wasn't meant to be. I believe I did hold off my amigo Alberto in the run, but we both had issues, it was just so damn hot.

2700 athletes were in the race, and with a 4 loop bike course that was as technical as they come, there was lots of braking for turns and passing.

I did find myself having fun on occassion, but there were lots of little things that bugged me too.

More later.

Big Couple of Weeks Ahead

Someone turned the furnace on in Dallas today. It was 96 degrees out at 6:30 pm during my drive home. I had a 7 mi run to get in tonight, and figured I'd do it on the treadmill. I ran the 1.25 miles to my neighborhood gym, hopped on the treadmill, and started at it. A combination of the heat not really bothering me on the way over, and the monotony of the treadmill forced me back out to the streets after just 2 miles indoors. It was a very dry heat, so while it was hot, the evaporating sweat helped with the cooling effect. The little breeze helped too.

In keeping with the Triathlon tone, I've got a race next weekend. CapTex Tri, which is a big Oly race in downtown Austin. You swim in Town Lake and bike and run right around the TX state capitol in downtown Austin. You can't beat the venue, and the competition is stiff.

I PR'd on this course back in 2005, so I'm interested to see how I stack up to that year. While my volume is down relative to '05 (I was building for my Ironman), I'm hoping the cummulitive effect of the last few seasons is worth something.

I'm going to train very hard right up through Thursday, then give my self an easy couple of days just prior to the race. I really need to train through this thing, but can't resist the opportunity to see where I am.

You may have noticed that I've joined the cult that is Twitter, and have added my Twitter feed as a page element on my blog. For those who aren't familiar with Twitter, it is a way to stalk and be stalked by people, essentially. I can text message in to Twitter what I'm doing, or send out messages to anyone who is following me, who either can receive my note by logging in to their Twitter page, getting my messages texted directly to their mobile device, sent to their IM client, or right off my feed on my blog.

There are several reason that motivated me to get on Twitter, but one primary reason is that my wife and I are headed to Europe for a week the day after my race (for you shady folks who stalk me on this site, but that I can't figure out who you are, no sense robbing me, I'll have a house sitter). We're going to Prague in the Czech Republic for 4 days, then will take a train over to Vienna, Austria for 4 days. We are leaving the kids behind for this one, so it will be a nice little breather before (gasp) baby #3 starts to run our life for a while. We're due on Christmas Day. Mom is feeling great.

So we have an international cell phone for this trip, and my hopes are to send some Twitter posts as we explore. Check back here for my Twitter updates, or better yet, sign up and add me as someone you 'follow'.

Cross Timbers Classic

Last night I was preparing myself to do a group ride with Gorilla Multisport this morning, and figured I'd go back to their weekly email I had sitting in my in box.

It turns out, they were planning on riding the Cross Timbers Classic and that there wouldn't be a group ride this morning.

The CTC is an organized ride for charity that starts over at Texas Motor Speedway and makes it way into my city before heading back. They offer distances of 10, 30, 50, 100K, and 100 miles. It is supported with a few rest stops, bath rooms, sag wagon, and they have food and beer at the finish.

You could register at the event, so I decided late last night to give it a go and it turned out to be a great choice because the ride was fun.

I ran into to my buddy, neighbor, and co-worked David just prior to the start, and we hooked up to do the first 25 miles together. David is 9 weeks out from IM Lake Placid and had a 100 miler, (his third in this training block) on the schedule for this morning.

The ride starts in the center of the Texas Motor Speedway oval, which is a 1.5 mile NASCAR track that holds 2 races annually.


It was cool getting inside there. I'd never been, so I didn't appreciate the size of this thing. It holds well over 200,000 people on race day.

The ride starts out with 1 lap around the track which was a blast. We started by the garages, made our way out on to pit row, and where up on the track. The bankings were ridiculous (45 degrees), and we rode along the bottom of the first turn. David had been in there before and showed me how to get up on top of the banking at the start of the second turn. Riding up there was a rush. You're a good 20 feet in elevation above the bottom of the track, it is like a shear drop down to the bottom, and you are just praying your tires give you enough grip to keep you from sliding down, while trying not to stub your uphill pedal on the track. One stub and you'd fall right down to the bottom.

The ride was good, the weather was great, and I got in a pretty decent 57 miles. Averaged 170 watts, 146 HR, and 18.0 mph.

Going Tubular

I made the move today. Bought a Zipp 606 wheelset, and went with Tubulars. They'll be here in time for the race in Austin in 2 weeks, so I'm looking forward to getting on them and tearing up the streets of Austin. Here's to hoping I don't have any flats while I'm still learning to be proficient with them. Touch wood.

The Open Road

You can't beat this. Mid 70's, no cars, farms, and the wind at your back.

This photo was taken right here heading west on Old Justin Rd. while out for a ride this morning.

In a Groove

I've been pretty consistent now for about 3 weeks, and am starting to feel like I'm building some fitness. Work has been pretty consistently predictable for a good stretch now, which no doubt helped with making all of my planned sessions.

I did my group ride/swim double again last night, and smacked it pretty good. I've logged a little over 200 miles on the bike over the last 2 weeks, and this group ride is my best weekly barometer for how I'm doing.

I've gone from being able to push 178 watts at a 161 HR which is about midway in Zone 4 for me back on March 12th, to pushing 185 watts at a 152 HR last night for the 23 mile ride. A pretty nice improvement. Still not quite as strong as I was in the July/August time period last year, but ahead of where I was this time last year.

We'll see if I can continue to build on these last couple of weeks. There is no doubt in my mind that I can take it to a much higher level. We'll just need to keep laying down some consistent sessions.